A Sweet Fantasy of Gun Control
Cake is wonderful. Could it make gun murder easier to take?
Cake will fix it.
Some people bake a cake for friends who’ve had a death in the family. That’s a nice thing.
On one level, however, it seems pretty ridiculous. How can the worst wound imaginable be fixed by cooked flour and sugar?
Nevertheless, I like the cake much more than when people say, “I’ll pray for you.” I appreciate the power of prayer, but don’t see how it really applies to the situation. Are you praying for me to be happier? I’d rather you come over and tell me a good joke.
Baking a cake is cooler because the baker has all that time to think about you and your dead relative while they bake the cake. And it’s likely that one of the things they think about is doing things with you in the future that might make life better, more livable for both of you.
Even if they buy the cake ready-made, they have a little time to think about you when they’re in the store. They might even think about you again when they check their bank app.
You can eat cake. You can’t eat a prayer. You can’t even tell if a prayer for you has actually gone out. According to the Gospel of Matthew, prayer should be secret, and I always wonder if secret activities ever get done.
That goes double for politicians who respond to gun violence with promises of “thoughts and prayers” for the families of the dead.
Most of us in dire straits because of shootings really don’t want thoughts and prayers at the time of our misfortune. We want gun control. But that’s not in the cards, according to Tim Burchett, a U.S. rep from Tennessee, where a school was recently shot to pieces.
He said last year that enhancing gun control was out of the question, and better ways to address the problem were hardening the schools and fixing mental illness in America.
We have had mixed reviews of our governmental dedication to mental health in this country. That’s the case all over the world, but you can’t find another nation where schools get shot up so frequently.
Burchett, a former 15-year elected member of Tennessee’s state government, knows all about addressing this issue. Tennesee ranks 29th in mental health funding.
“If you think Washington is going to fix this problem, you’re wrong,” the congressman said recently, right after somebody shot up The Covenant School in Nashville. “They’re not going to fix this problem. They are the problem.”
Well, the problem is somewhere. A good place to search could be where there are politicians who won’t take gun control seriously.
If we can’t get gun control, maybe we could have something else from the politicians.
The only thing I can think of is cake.
Perhaps politicians could be required to spend a little campaign money to send a cake to the family of every person killed or injured by gunfire in his or her district. The cake donors might include a local municipal board member, the mayor, a state representative and senator, a U.S. rep, two U.S. senators and the president.
Burchett’s home state counted 1,273 gun deaths and 2,220 injuries last year, achieving the rank of 11th in the country in human-shootings-per-capita. If a cake was sent out for every one of those, that would be 3,493 cakes. Divide that number among Tennessee’s four congressional districts, and there are 873 cakes for which Burchett might have responsibility, all things being equal.
At a discounted price of, say, $10 per cake, that’s a campaign expenditure of about $8,730, and with shipping of say, $5 apiece, a total of $10,913.
That’s not enough money to force old Tim to waste much time thinking about the families the cakes would go to, however. He raised $1.4 million before the 2022 election.
So the Sweeter Shooting Deaths Act should require that each cake bear the office holder’s thumbprint in the icing and a signed note in the box.
Dear family of _____ (insert name here):
Greetings from Congressman Tim Burchett!
All of us are real sad your family member _____ got shot. Here’s a cake to help you feel better!
I can’t think of anything else to do about the shooting-of-people problem. The dysfunctional Congress is all tied up in knots over this complex issue!
We can’t decide what we need: more gun control or more cakes. It’s a quandary.
You yourself probably are against gun control! Well, until recently.
In addition to the free cake, I’m praying for you.
Please consider backing my upcoming campaign. I have to pay for all these cakes!
Well said. So sadly devolutionary.
Pat-a-Cake, pat-a-cake, Burchett man; bake me a cake as fast as you can; make us forget guns and re-elect thee; just some more cake from the Burchett Bakery.